According to local press reports, the recent rioting in the Tottenham section of North London has government officials particularly worried. Next summer the city will host the Olympic Games and some of the venues are only a few miles to the east. Authorities fear smoldering resentment from this summer will ignite into violence during the games. The authorities’ concerns reminded me of London a decade ago when the city was also dealing with fears that social unrest would mar another major public event. In 1999, while some were worried about Y2K and their computer systems going haywire, far more Brits were preoccupied with the biggest political football of late 20^th century England – the celebration of the Millennium and the “Millennium Dome.” 

Parliament had appropriated £400 million of the £758 million needed for the construction of a huge dome that was to be the centerpiece of Great Britain’s millennium celebration. The government money was to come from the National Lottery. The rest would be contributions from the business community. The appropriation had been passed when John Major and the conservatives were in power. They had envisioned a grand edifice celebrating Britain’s equally grand tradition. The inside would commemorate not only great moments in British history but also the influence of Christianity on the development of British culture. The greatest moment of all, of course, would be the birth of Christ. After all, the conservatives reasoned, what was the millennium but the 2000th anniversary of Christ’s birth? In essence, the conservatives were prepared to spend three quarters of a billion pounds – over $1,125,000,000 – on the biggest birthday party in history. Then Tony Blair came to power.

Many of Blair’s liberal friends believed the Dome project should be scrapped. Some noted that only the exterior shape had been determined. What, specifically, would the content be? Was it to be Disney, or an expo, or a theme park? Would it have roller coasters? The Dome, they complained, looked like an empty, glorified big-top in search of something to put inside it. The new Health Secretary described it as “the biggest kite in history.” Others suggested that government money could be better spent on such “tedious things as health, education and public transport, rather than on construction of some grotesquely ugly hunk of triumphalist civic architecture designed to imbue viewers with awe and gratitude for their rulers.”

Ultimately, Blair decided to ignore the critics. He was interested in seeing the Dome completed. In his mind, it could be “an inclusive national celebration which looked to the future… something that would be the biggest and best in the world.” There would be 60 pavilions inside. One would be a “virtual reality safari through the human body;” another a “Frankenstein show on science and it’s misuses;” yet another would be a “walk in space to see the earth as others see it.” Altogether, the Dome project would provide national focus, bring the country together, and – no small consideration – be a showcase for Blair’s new Labor government. Under the leadership of Peter Mandelson, the New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC) began shaping the liberal vision of a proper millennium celebration. That’s when the real trouble began.

The NMEC predicted that the contents of the Dome would be “magnificent in concept and breathtaking in execution.” It did not take long to take the conservatives’ breath away. The Dome was to be divided into nine thematic zones but British history would not be featured anywhere – no Magna Carta, no Armada, no Glorious Revolution. Historical pageants, creative director Stephen Bayley announced, might send the wrong signals to Britain’s European neighbors by emphasizing the nation’s imperial past. “As soon as you get self-conscious about national identity,” Bayley claimed, “things get very awkward.” The Lords were furious but Bayley wasn’t finished. He next announced that the Union Jack would not be displayed in the Dome. Yes, it was Britain’s celebration; yes, it was being funded with public money; yes, it was meant to be a statement of British “achievement, confidence, and prowess.” But raising the nation’s flag would be far too “narrowly nationalistic.” The Lords were apoplectic. The Millennium experience, one conservative critic complained, will not be a journey through time, but a journey into the unknown. Bayley had one surprise left. He could see no place for the representation of the Christian Church in the Dome. One of the nine zones would be entitled “The Spirit Zone” but it would give no primacy to any specific religion.

Now it was the religious community’s turn to react. The Millennium is the celebration of the birth of Christ, Anglican and Catholic bishops argued. No, Bayley responded, it has little to do with Christianity; it has to do with time. The birth date of Christ, he insisted, is “unproven.” Creative consultant Sir Terence Conran agreed: “The Dome will not have an overriding Christian or religious theme; it would be absolutely inappropriate if it did.” The NMEC was not about to validate a “national act of Christian worship.” And the bishops were not about to accept the NMEC’s plans. The Church, the Bishop of Maidstone announced, would have no part in a “hedonistic secular beanfest.” As spokesman for the Archbishops’ Millennium Advisory Group (AMAG), he insisted on construction, within “The Spirit Zone,” of a Christian chapel and a separate space where “those of other faiths could go to pray.”

This controversy proved to be Bayley’s undoing. He resigned and Mandelson promised that the impact of Christianity on western civilization would be a central theme in the Dome. No sooner had Mandelson and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, worked out an agreement that would insure the centrality of Christianity to the project than David Hope, Archbishop of York condemned the Dome as a “monument to human arrogance which contrasts starkly with the true meaning of the birth of Christ.” Hope was particularly incensed with the humanoid figure of “non-specified gender” that the designers planned for the very center of the Dome. Visitors’ first experience upon entering the Dome would be to celebrate the “dawn of a new era” by “riding a moving stairway through the hollowed-out insides of a giant human figure which has no genitals.” The York prelate saw little cause for celebration. “The great humility of Bethlehem,” he announced, “has now become the hubris of the £750 million Dome with its half-man half-woman figure at the center which only reflects the confusion of the age.”

While the planners tried to salve the sensitivities of the churchmen, they created yet another furor with their agreement to accept £12 million from the McDonald’s corporation. Was it proper, one liberal MP asked, for Mr. Blair’s “showcase of British culture” to be sponsored by a “great American fast food corporation which would probably try to reduce it to a large McDome and fries?”

Not that the religious issues were settled. Dome designers decided to split “The Spirit Zone” into twelve sections, only one of which would be devoted to Christianity. Visitors, the publicists said, would pass through a “mist curtain” into an “enclosed white space with water droplet effect on the floor.” “This is all about dumbing down religion,” Rev. Steve Chalke complained. “People go through a mist curtain into a complete spiritual fog – a fruit salad of religions.” The NMEC, in an effort to reduce church opposition, renamed “The Spirit Zone” “The Faith Zone” and planned to include in it a sound-proof “prayer space.” Next, the NMEC disclosed that a new condom manufactured by Durex Avanti had been approved for sale inside the Dome. “The condom is made from Duron,” the NMEC announced, “a recently developed material which is twice the strength of latex, enabling them to be 40% thinner than conventional sheaths and thus being the first condom to get really close to the natural feeling of sex.” Duron, the NMEC declared, was the “condom for the 21st century!” Catholic clerics were outraged. Their Anglican brothers were appalled. Christians and non-Christians alike, they predicted, would be shocked and surprised. Once again, talk of a church boycott spread through the land.

What were not spreading nearly as quickly through the land were the “Millennium Moment Candle Packs.” A coalition of Christian churches had conceived the idea of mailing a votive candle pack to each household in the nation as a gift to mark the millennium. The total cost of the program was expected to exceed £7 million. Unfortunately, the packs were too big to fit through the standard letterbox opening. Urban priests complained that attempts to personally deliver the packs had been unsuccessful because most people refused to open their doors to unannounced visitors, even when the visitor was their own parish priest. In response to numerous complaints from all parts of the kingdom, the manufacturer revealed that the packs had been made purposely too large “so that a child or an animal could not get hold of the pack and eat it.”

The great condom controversy had barely settled down when word leaked out that the NMEC had asked the Church of England to pay £50,000 for the honor of being the “preferred religious partner” of the Millennium Dome’s official brochure. If the church did not accept, other religious groups – the Church of Scientology perhaps – would be made the same offer. The conservatives demanded an immediate apology from the NMEC for its offensive offer. “It’s appalling,” MP David Farber opined. “This latest story has let the cat out of the bag and shows that the NMEC sees the issue of Christianity as an unwelcome intrusion into the celebrations.”

As December 1999 approached, the NMEC was still valiantly trying to complete its mission on time. Christians were still threatening a boycott. Conservatives saw the project as “part of Blair’s politically correct program to abolish Britain.” Then the Muslims checked in. They announced that they would not use the Dome’s designated “prayer space.” It was a violation of their religious beliefs to worship in any building funded by gambling (i.e. the Lottery) money. They would raise enough money to construct a separate “prayer hall” complete with a “Dome Imam” who would be on duty from sunrise to sunset.

Perhaps in an effort to placate Muslims and other non-Christians, the NMEC announced that “The Faith Zone” would be renamed simply “Faith Zone” because the name “The Faith Zone” was too Christian and risked offending other religions. Use of the word “The” in front of “Faith Zone,” spokesperson Jennie Page explained, might imply that there is one faith – Christianity – that is more important than the others. “We wanted to indicate that the Dome was inclusive of all faiths.”

The Christian community’s reaction was predictable. One critic called the change silly; another labeled it pathetic – a complete overreaction. “Now,” the Director of the Christian Institute exclaimed, “it seems that even the tiny residual element of Christianity in the Dome is being watered down.” In response, the designer of “Faith Zone,” an agnostic whose best-known previous work was designing shops for Bond Street merchants, decided to dredge up the entire religion issue. “God,” architect Eva Jiricna declared, “is irrelevant to the Millennium.” On the very eve of the new millennium there was, once again, Big Trouble at the Big Top.

Through it all, the NMEC persevered, secure in the hope that the brilliance of the New Year’s Eve spectacular would silence all critics. Instead, the logistical foul-ups only added more voices of dissatisfaction as “The Event,” described by the New Millennium Experience Company as “one amazing night,” became “as tedious and frustrating as a commuter’s Monday morning.” One of the two new Tube lines to the Dome was reserved for the Blair and his colleagues. The rest of the 10,000 invited guests had to use the other line. Upon arrival at the Dome, they were detained at the station for up to four hours while security services checked for weapons and herded the crowds through a single metal detector. “Imagine if, on the busiest day in a millennium, the British Airports Authority had decided that Heathrow required only one security scanner, and you have some idea of the result.”

At 10:30 PM, the bars, restaurants, and exhibits closed and “The Event” began. New works of popular and classical music were interwoven with more traditional New Years fare. Troupes of dancers, acrobats, and gymnasts interpreted the music in, at times, rather unconventional ways. As the Daily Telegraph reported: “Latin sex hit Greenwich while England watched. Armies of nearly naked dancers, with tinselled buttocks aquiver and breasts topped with powder puffs on which cherries seem to have been popped as carefully as on a set of Bakewell tarts, trooped and danced, shivered and wobbled across the stage and runway. One man had a three-foot-long, slightly spiky and rainbow coloured penis.” The Queen, already uncomfortable at spending New Year’s Eve with the public, observed the proceedings “with the same expression that she has employed over her many years watching tribal dances in far-flung Commonwealth outposts while the ladies from Dundee, the families from north London, and the burghers of Britain looked as if they had been dropped on an alien planet.”

In the middle of the show, the music stopped and the Archbishop of Canterbury attempted to lead the 10,000 in a “Millennial Prayer.” Only about five percent of the revelers joined in. The interlude seemed “as absurd as a shrine to the Virgin Mary inside the engine compartment of a Mini.” All in all, it was an interesting, if not amazing, night. The much-heralded “River of Fire” failed to live up to advance billing, as did the IRA bomb threat that proved to be just that – a threat and nothing more. Aside from a lot of lost tempers, there was, by Tottenham standards, little trouble. Police reported 45 arrests for drunkenness; 11 for disorderly conduct, 7 for robbery, 6 for indecency, 3 for assault, 3 for drugs, 1 for criminal damage. Hopefully, next summer’s Olympic games can be as peaceful.